Monday, February 7, 2011

I'm bummed out today, and not exactly sure why. I haven't lit into anybody yet, so maybe I can make it all day without biting off anybody's heads. Oh, I did express some vocal displeasure to Santa about the situation with the air conditioner/heater repairman. There's some problem verifying our warranty, which is good for another 6 years, so the repair guy can't order the parts until it gets resolved. And my mother is coming this weekend, so I would sure like to have some heat or air conditioning, whatever mood Orlando is in at the time. Oh well, it is what it is, I suppose. David's doing a great job of prodding them to get it done, so I'm so grateful to him for that.

I think the main problem with me today is feeling bummed about, first of all, the situation that came up with us last week. I thought things were getting better inside me, but today I don't think so. But someone said something wonderful to me last week - "God doesn't allow pain into our lives unless he's also there to hold our hand through it." That meant so much to me.

Another thing is that I'm having pre-empty next syndrome. Rachel's just 16, so she's not going to be moving out for several years at least, so it's not that part. It has to do with the fact that in 79 days Rachel is going to be able to take her driving test, and she's such a good driver, I can't imagine she won't pass it. This is a good thing. It's going to allow her more independence, another step in growing up. But for me, it feels like a huge loss. I love the time we spend together in the car. We either get to talk to each other, or I get to listen to her awesome music choices from her IPOD - and I'll have no way to find all that cool music for myself once we don't ride in the car much together any more. I was trying to get her to let me download all her music into my ITouch, but it seems like when I talk to her about that she just gets annoyed, so I'm not going to bring that up again. I am going to try to find a way to talk to her about burning me some disks of favorite songs so I can put them on my ITouch myself. She's said she'd do it several times before, but hasn't ever done it (a habit most definitely inherited from me!). It makes me so sad to think about losing that special part of my life. Yes, it will be nice when she can drive herself places, but I'm sure gonna miss her.

My head even tries to run away with how I'm going to feel when she moves out for good. How the heck can I possibly know right now how I'm going to feel? I can't. So what's the point of worrying about it? None. So why am I doing it anyway? I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that I don't always make positive choices in my life, and maybe this is one of those times.

Something really cool occurred to me today. Our Art Journal Caravan verb post this week is "live." I did one with a cool quote "Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today, Hope for Tomorrow," and was happy with it. But then I realized that my very own life statement is about living out loud. And guess what? Maybe living out loud is not always feeling wildly happy and positive emotions. Maybe it's about just FEELING the emotions in the first place, as much as they need to be felt for as long as they need to be felt. And not giving up for some lame reason. The living out loud quote has been my mission statement for 25 years now, and I'm not giving it up for anything. I have noticed, however, that more people are embracing these words and this concept in their lives. I had someone in a scrapbook chat the other night say that they'd like to have that as a scrapbook name, but it was already taken - yes, I have that name at every store I'm registered at, which is a LOT of stores! My husband also pointed out to me that the Oxygen channel has as its theme "Live Out Loud." Hey, did they get my permission? Nope! Oh well, I have no copyright...LOL! I want to read a biography of Emile Zola sometime so I can know just what he felt/meant about living out loud. But no matter what, I've imposed my own interpretation about it, and that's what it means to me. It's being fully present, being willing to take risks, make decisions that may be unpopular, wear strange colors together, say absurd things, run marathons, love fearlessly, every single day. Those are just some of the interpretations.

I have not been in the mood to scrapbook all day, but maybe I'm over that now, so I'm gonna go try it.